The present invention relates to an improved spring trap for burrowing animals such as rodents, gophers and moles.
A pair or moles produce four young each year. The young are seldom observed until they are practically full grown. In the middle western states the young are born in April, and are fed in the nest until sometime in June. When the young begin to run in June, a sharp increase in the number of runways will be observed. The burrows are from one and one-half to two incites in diameter, and are feed lines. Into these burrows crawl the earthworms and insects which are eaten by the moles. As a rule there is one family of moles for each set of runways and feed lines. In times of food scarcity, the runways of one family may be invaded by moles from a different family.
Moles are kept out of the greens of golf courses by killing the soil organisms. This is accomplished by applying strong mixtures of lead arsenate or ammonium sulphate. However, it is not practical or even legal in most areas for homeowners to apply such strong chemicals to their lawns and gardens.
The surest way to eliminate moles is to destroy them. In the past, this has been done by a device known as a choker loop trap. Other types of mole traps have been devised but none is as efficient as the choker loop type. The trap will work in lawns, vegetable gardens, and in any kind of soil. In setting the choker loop trap, less attention need be given to conditioning the soil. The loops may be forced into the ground with the certainty that they well react promptly when the trap is sprung. Traps of this type will also stand up to the work better than any other type in heavy clay or gravel soils.
Nevertheless, there were problems with previous choker loop traps. Earlier traps were difficult aid dangerous to set, with a real possibility of the fingers or hands being pinched by the loops. The triggers and latches often had complex interaction with the spring and other parts of the trap. Often there was only one pair of loops in the trap, allowing the possibility of the animal avoiding the loops or escaping from the trap, or of not being killed instantaneously and therefore undergoing unnecessary suffering.
There is a need for an improved rodent or mole trap that overcomes previous deficiencies with choker loop type traps.